Titanic Attractions – $15M museum kicks off tourist season

A titanic exhibit

The $15 million Titanic museum, a one-half scale replica of the ship, is 88 feet tall at the top of its smoke stacks and has a water feature that makes the building look like a ship gliding through the water.

Inside is a museum of 20 galleries filled with reproductions of first-class and third-class accommodations, a quarter-million-dollar telegraph system identical to the one used to send the ship’s SOS signal, a replica of the ship’s grand staircase and dozens of artifacts, including the life vest worn by famous socialite Madeleine Astor.

All are intended to convey the emotion of the passengers on that journey, according to creator John Joslyn of Cedar Bay Entertainment.

“We like to think of it as a personal experience of what life on board was like,” Joslyn said during a personal tour of the facility days before it opened to the public.

It’s a labor of love for the television producer-turned-Bransonite. He began collecting Titanic information and memorabilia while producing a TV documentary about the ship in the mid-1980s, and he was hooked.

He wanted to build a museum about the ship and its passengers. From the beginning, Branson was one of the sites he wanted.

“We’ve been looking (at Branson) since 1992,” said Joslyn, who moved to Branson with his wife, Mary Kellogg Joslyn, in 2005. “We thought this was the right market for this type of attraction. It was the demographics of the region … and the proximity of tourist attractions and population.”

More than 7 million people visit Branson annually to see the 100-plus shows and dozens of attractions the city has to offer. Moving through the Titanic museum – which had a soft opening March 8 and has its grand opening scheduled for April 7 – one quickly realizes it’s more than a museum.

There are the artifacts – a one-twenty-fourth scale model of the ship built in Germany, actual designs for the ship, and tools used to construct it – but there are also more than 600 information panels, some with opportunities for kids to interact and answer questions, and a fully encompassing environment of music and video.

Behind the scenes

Much of that environment was created by local companies.

Springfield architecture firm Marshall-Waters-Woody Associates started designing plans for the museum in February 2005.

It was a unique challenge, according to architect Steve Guilliams, one of several who worked on the project.

“In our detailing, we tried to replicate the ship – that’s a half-size Titanic sitting there,” Guilliams said. “We had some scale drawings, so we worked with those, laying out the ship façade, deciding heights and lengths and figuring out how it curves. It has some artistic license – if we did every screw, nut and bolt we’d go forever – but we wanted a correct portrayal of the ship.”

The attention to detail continues inside, where Springfield’s Touché Designs did the interior design work. Owner Jeanne Waters-Hill and her staff of seven coordinated the owner’s vision and made it reality – and the job wasn’t easy.

“It’s the largest project we’ve ever done,” Waters-Hill said. “Just to get it going with the level of quality that it needed to have, and get it up and running for this season was tough. They told us it would be seven days a week, and it was – seven days a week for almost a year.”

The work of Springfield-based American Glass and Aluminum is featured prominently in the museum’s Memorial Room, where etched glass panels bear the names of the passengers. American Glass Sales Representative Michele Day said she was impressed with the attention to accuracy.

“I would input data, send it to (co-owner) Mary Kellogg Joslyn for her review, and she would send it to some of her Titanic experts for review, and then we would redo it,” Day said.

“Then I would resubmit it, and someone else would look at it, and we’d redo it. They did everything humanly possible to make sure they were historically accurate and gave credit to those who survived and (those who) perished,” Day added.

Visitors are given the name of one of the ship’s passengers along with their “boarding pass” ticket; at the end of the trip, passengers find out whether they survived the trip.

Other attractions on tap

New attractions are a big part of Branson’s building boom, which set a record for construction values with $173.5 million in 2005.

Belair Holdings LLC is set to open the $5 million Dick Clark American Bandstand Theater in April. The complex, on Highway 76 across from Dixie Stampede, features the Dick Clark American Bandstand Grill, a 900-seat theater and an exhibition of restored 1957 automobiles and memorabilia called the Patch Collection.

The shows, set to begin April 21, include 50s rock stars Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Fabian, Bobby Vee, The Comets, and Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

Springfield-based Rich Kramer Construction is the general contractor on the American Bandstand Theater complex, and Chamberlain Architects PC is the architect.

Silver Dollar City is close to completion on the Grand Exposition, an $8 million, two-acre expansion modeled after the world fairs in St. Louis, Chicago and Philadelphia at the beginning of the 20th century.

The park expects to add 200 new jobs with the expansion, which will add 10 new rides and a collection of attractions and entertainment options in the turn-of-the-century theme. (See in-progress photos on page 8.)

The Butterfly Palace, an interactive aviary and insectarium, is also nearing completion on the strip. The attraction, designed by Baron Design & Associates LLC and constructed by Metro Design & Construction Inc., will feature plants and trees set to resemble South American jungles, along with a mirror maze and a 3-D movie space.

New shows aren’t limited to the strip. New Shanghai Circus moved into a new home at 645 State Highway 165 late last season. The 900-seat, $2.9 million New Shanghai Theatre is the first building devoted solely to the Chinese acrobat troupe, which has been in various Branson theaters since 1997.

Butterfly Palace is one of several new attractions on the Branson strip.

Rich Kramer Construction crews continue work on the Dick Clark American Bandstand Theater.[[In-content Ad]]